Chaos And Pain Reads Shit So You Don't Have To, Mar 2014 Part 2

Finishing up this month's installment of "CNP Reads Shit So You Don't Have To", we have Muscular Development and Flex.  I didn't bother to review Power because that magazine rarely has anything of interest unless you want to reread tired shit about the Cube Method or Intermittent Fasting, so I passed on it.  I might replace The Box with Power next month and drop Muscle and Fitness altogether, but we'll see where my scatterbrain takes me in the magazine section- you people might end up with MD, Flex, and Fangoria.  In any event, here's the goods from MD and Flex.

Muscular Development Jan 2014
MD is by far and away my favorite bodybuilding rag, and the only magazine outside of Mental Floss and Wired to which I've ever subscribed.  Unfortunately, the Barnes and Noble in which I was reading magazines tossed or sold both their March and April MDs, leaving me only May, which i was hoping to save for next month.  Thus, I dug out January from my personal pile to review for you guys.  Before you get out your powdered wigs and gavels to judge me, bear in mind this magazine is literally jammed to the gills with study synopses they actually fucking cite, and thus keeps me from having to subscribe to a shitload of expensive academic journals.  If you're going to get a magazine subscription to something meatheadish, skip Power and grab MD- it's a far better resource.

Applying a tourniquet to your limbs might cause your opponents on the platform to fatally injure themselves.
A new technique in bodybuilding and strength training of which you may not have heard is called occlusion training, which essentially consists of training with a loose tourniquet tied around the insertion point of the limbs being trained.  I've tried it for squats and it fatigued me like nothing I've ever done in my life.  Studies have recently shown that occlusion training allows trainees to gain more strength and mass with drastically reduced loads- one study with rugby players showed a marked increase in bench press, squat, sprinting, leg power, and testosterone when trainees trained with a thigh occlusion cuff using 70% of their 1RM for 5x5 on bench, squat, and pullups.  Ace bandages in training might be your secret weapon to crushing the opposition on the platform.

Cook CJ, Kilduff LP, Beaven CM. Improving strength and power in trained athletes with 3 weeks of occlusion training.  Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2014 Jan;9(1):166-72.

BREAKING NEWS:  Jogging before squatting kills your gainz.
In a study that should be surprising to absolutely no one on Earth, science has discovered that doing 45 minutes of aerobic exercise at 75% effort trashes your performance in squatting, but not bench press, if you lift right after doing cardio.  Thus, if you're going to practice running away from evangelical Christians/people/bears/boogeymen/whatever it is people practice running away from, do it after your squat workout rather than before.

Cantrell GS, Schilling BK, Paquette MR, Murlasits Z.  Maximal strength, power, and aerobic endurance adaptations to concurrent strength and sprint interval training.  Eur J Appl Physiol. 2014 Apr;114(4):763-71

This would not inspire me to sleep, but I'd get horizontal, at least.

Get moar sleep to get less fat.

No matter how much I tell people sleep is fucking critical, they make all sorts of excuses for not getting it, most of which revolve around children.  This is what soundproof closets with stout locks are for, people.  If you're not getting 7-9 hours of sleep a night, you're pretty much guaranteed to  have larger waist circumference, total body fat, abdominal fat, and surface fat, in addition to less testosterone than people like myself, who put babies in dumpsters, where they belong.

Yi S, Nakagawa T, Yamamoto S, Mizoue T, Takahashi Y, Noda M, Matsushita Y.  Short sleep duration in association with CT-scanned abdominal fat areas: the Hitachi Health Study.  Int J Obes (Lond). 2013 Jan;37(1):129-34.

Schmid SM, Hallschmid M, Jauch-Chara K, Lehnert H, Schultes B.
  Sleep timing may modulate the effect of sleep loss on testosterone. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2012 Nov;77(5):749-54.

If you want to be BR00TAL, listen to BR00TAL music.

It's always nice when science catches up to broscience, and I can't count the number of times I've had pseudointellectuals spout nonsense at me about how I train to the wrong kind of music according to science.  As far as I was concerned, science can get fucked- there's a reason why teenage males listen to metal- they have insanely high test levels.  As such, it stands to reason that such music would have a positive effect on aggression and test levels, which science has finally decided it does.  Aggressive music like metal, rap, and dubstep increase sympathetic nervous system activity and testosterone levels.  Once again, the 130lb bitches screaming and crying about the evils of "broscience" can eat a bag of dicks.

Yamasaki A, Booker A, Kapur V, Tilt A, Niess H, Lillemoe KD, Warshaw AL, Conrad C.  The impact of music on metabolism.  Nutrition. 2012 Nov-Dec;28(11-12):1075-80.

MORE PROTONZ = MOAR GAINZ

There is no practical upper limit to the anabolic response to protein or amino acid intake- the more protein you eat, the more anabolic the meal is.  The old adage of no more than 30 grams of protein per meal continues to get the fuck kicked out of it, but for whatever reason, the 130lbers of the internet trot that fucker out like it's the first sentence of the fucking Bible.  Pass me that brontosaurus leg, because I'm about to bring on the gainz.  Let the naysaying pussies eat less- it just means more steak for us.

Deutz NE, Wolfe RR.  Is there a maximal anabolic response to protein intake with a meal?  Clin Nutr. 2013 Apr;32(2):309-13.

Stop asking if coffee is good for you, already.  Of course it fucking is- it raises testosterone and suppresses estrogen.
The eggheads at Harvard come through again, showing definitively that coffee intake results in increased total and free testosterone levels and decreased estradiol.  Fuck eating beans- drink more coffee at every meal.

Wedick NM, Mantzoros CS, Ding EL, Brennan AM, Rosner B, Rimm EB, Hu FB, van Dam RM.  The effects of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee on sex hormone-binding globulin and endogenous sex hormone levels: a randomized controlled trial.  Nutr J. 2012 Oct 19;11:86.

Flex April 2014
Flex has been an old standby in the meathead magazine genre- not too high-brow, yet not too lowbrow, and more hardcore than Muscle and Fitness.  They lack the aggression and the intellect of Muscular Development at Flex, but I suppose they make up for that in a bit of refinement, which in my opinion has little place in bodybuilding.  In any event, it's not a half-bad mag, but it's hardly the best of the bunch.

Cutting your lifts short means cutting your gainz short.
Trainees who use a longer range of motion experience less strength and muscle loss during a layoff, and have greater strength and hypertrophy gains while training, in addition to more fat loss.  Might be time to start mixing in more deficit work, people.

McMahon GE, Morse CI, Burden A, Winwood K, Onambélé GL.  Impact of range of motion during ecologically valid resistance training protocols on muscle size, subcutaneous fat, and strength.  J Strength Cond Res. 2014 Jan;28(1):245-55.

I think if the pump I currently have persists for more than four hours, I am supposed to seek medical attention.

Dat pump, bro.
Want to look swole at the club?  Apparently, there's no need to bring dumbbells in your trunk and pump up in the parking lot every hour- apparently if you break your ass hard enough in the gym, you'll stay pumped for two days.  According to a new study by Brett Contreras and his trusty German sidekick, strenuous resistance exercise can result in an acute increase in muscle water content for up to 52 hours.

Schoenfeld, BJ, Contreras B.  The Muscle Pump: Potential Mechanisms and Applications for Enhancing Hypertrophic Adaptations.  J Str Con.  Article published ahead of print. 23 Dec 2013.  Web.  26 Mar 2014.  http://journals.lww.com/nsca-scj/Abstract/publishahead/The_Muscle_Pump___Potential_Mechanisms_and.99586.aspx

Posing for selfies makes you stronger.
One study revealed contractions of biceps and triceps by simultaneously contracting both muscle groups at 90° of the elbow joint, followed by 4-s muscle relaxation (10 repetitions/set, 5 sets/day) for 12 weeks resulted in a 4% increase in muscular size and a significant increase in agonist EMG activities- ~30% at 4 weeks and 40%+ at 12 weeks.  Bros got bigger and stronger by doing a front double biceps in front of a mirror for a few minutes a day.  Fuck do you even lift- do you even selfie, bro?

Maeo S, Yoshitake Y, Takai Y, Fukunaga T, Kanehisa H.  Neuromuscular adaptations following 12-week maximal voluntary co-contraction training.  Eur J Appl Physiol. 2014 Apr;114(4):663-73.

Sprinkle some leucine on your steak.
Time to add some leucine to your steak and rib rubs!  Stupid science bitches couldn't make my friends more smarter, but apparently some stupid science bitches could make steak more steaker.  According to a new study, five grams of leucine taken with protein maximizes muscle protein synthesis rates. For those of you starting your cut for the beach, you might want to take note- maximizing your protein synthesis can be especially important on a calorically restricted diet.

Churchward-Venne TA, Breen L, Di Donato DM, Hector AJ, Mitchell CJ, Moore DR, Stellingwerff T, Breuille D, Offord EA, Baker SK, Phillips SM.  Leucine supplementation of a low-protein mixed macronutrient beverage enhances myofibrillar protein synthesis in young men: a double-blind, randomized trial.  Am J Clin Nutr. 2014 Feb;99(2):276-86.